Welcome to medDiversa

Welcome to medDiversa

Marine biodiversity is a dynamic entity and is widely recognised as a critical factor for ecosystem maintenance. The aim of medDiversa (Global change on highly diverse Mediterranean coralligenous communities: Consequences for biodiversity conservation) is to investigate the current extent of biodiversity of the high diverse coralligenous outcrops of the Mediterranean Sea, detect its changes, and create a scientific platform in developing future scenarios of biodiversity response to global change across large spatial and mid- to long-term temporal scales. This quantitative information has been largely documented in several terrestrial and tropical marine ecosystems but has never been assessed in coralligenous outcrops on a true multidisciplinary platform.

Field surveys of the South Region were successfully carried out. We have now all the data from the spatial and temporal scale for the three main regions of the medDiversa project. Please check the new images from the Regional Approach and Image Gallery.

A new article on the effects derived from an extreme storm event on coralligenous outcrops has been published "Teixidó N, Casas E, Cebrián E, Linares C, Garrabou J (2013) Impacts on coralligenous outcrop biodiversity of a dramatic coastal storm. PLoS ONE 8(1): e53742. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0053742"

MedRecover has published a database on species from Mediterranean coralligenous:

Funding

The medDiversa project, funded by the Total Foundation for three and a half years from 2010 to 2013, was launched in April 2010. The Total Foundation aims at developing initiatives for the preservation of natural biodiversity in countries where is active, with a large number of studies and research partnerships, together with public-awareness, education and outreach programmes. We gratefully acknowledge the Total Foundation for funding medDiversa.